The Eternal Game
by thistal
Summary: Harry and Ginny are in an alternate universe that has gateways to an infinity of other universes. Many of them are from other books and some are my own creations. This story will have a lot of crossovers with each of them lasting 1-3 chapters on average. I will try to have as few spoilers as possible and I will warn you before chapters.


The Beginning

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Harry and Ginny are in an alternate universe that has gateways to an infinity of other universes. Many of them are from other books and some are my own creations. This story will have a lot of crossovers with each of them lasting 1-3 chapters on average. There are a lot of crossovers, and I don't even know what a lot of them will be, so I didn't bother putting it into the description. I will be telling you what universe they are going to next and then I will give a quick synopsis of what happened the chapter after they leave each world if you are trying to avoid spoilers. I will also be trying to put as few spoilers in this as possible. I have rated this T because I just want to be careful. There won't be anything more than a few bad jokes and some swearing.

* * *

It didn't work. That was what was running through Harry Potter's mind as his life bled out onto the forest floor. He knew he should get up. Heal himself. Keep going. Keep running. But for the moment it all seemed a bit much. Surely a rest couldn't hurt? He recalled the past hour. Why hadn't Voldemort died? What didn't Dumbledore realize?

_"Avada Kedavra!"_

_"Expelliarmus!"_

_With a bang the spells met in the middle on the circle they had been treading. The next second the combatants were hidden in a green and red explosion. When the smoke cleared the crowd could see Voldemort still standing tall but with his wand pointing at a figure on the ground. As the figure began to cough Voldemort spoke,_

_"Foolish boy. You think I only had one safeguard? Neither you nor Dumbledore even suspected I had more than Horcruxes protecting me? Do you have any more advice for me before I kill you?" Voldemort sneered_

"_Just one more thing" Harry said weakly "The apparition wards are down."_

_Harry disapparated with a crack and as he was disappearing he saw Voldemort shoot a final spell at him. He only had a moment to think of Dobby and of the irony that both of them would be killed while disapperating before the spell hit._

What was the spell? Not a killing curse surely? He wouldn't be alive if it was. So what was it? It might be some exploding curse? It seemed to have had that effect on his insides. It looked like he was going to die here. Not the way he had hoped to die but oh well. Sometimes you just don't get what you want.

And slowly Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, died. He died without any fanfare. Just him lying on the forest floor in the wilderness of Scotland with a hole in his chest where Voldemort's curse hit him. Fate seemed to be finally through with Harry Potter. It had certainly done its best to hold onto him. He survived the killing curse many times and had even died then come back but it was all over at last. However fate doesn't like being made a fool and had one last trick to play on The Boy Who Lived.

Harry eventually began to wake up. At first he wasn't sure what was happening or where he was and it took him almost a minute to realize that his chest no longer hurt. After this realization he tried to think if any of his other wounds hurt and he realized they didn't. This was such a odd feeling for him recently that he just took some time to savor it. After a long moment he began to think about how this had happened. He eventually thought that maybe opening his eyes would give him a clue. When he did he found that he seemed to be lying on... Nothing. Below him was a endless expanse of darkness dotted every 10 or so feet with globes of color. He looked around and it seemed that it was the same in every direction, as far as the eye could see.

"What the hell is happening?" Harry asked no one in particular and yet he got a response.

"The eternal game" Said a voice from behind Harry

Harry whipped around and saw a silvery outline in the vague shape of a person behind him

"Who are you and what is the eternal game?"

"Your first questions matters very little and your second question more than you could imagine" said the ghost, for it was the ghost talking. "In any case I have been here for so long that it is hard for me to remember anymore"

'How long have you been here for? And where IS here?" Harry asked, getting more confused by the second

"This place is out of the normal flow of time. Merely a few decades passed in your world but a uncounted number of millennium have passed here since I... I suppose the term would be died"

"You still haven't answered my questions. Where is here and what is the eternal game?" Harry demanded, beginning to get annoyed

"Here is nowhere and the eternal game is just what it sounds like" The ghost said before letting out a chuckle at the expression on Harry's face "The first part is true to a degree. Here is nowhere and everywhere all at once. I will try to explain it more later after you understand what this place is for. After all isn't the why more important than the how?"

"I would be happy if you fully answered either question." Harry said before a terrible thought struck him.

"Are you... Someone I know?" Harry said, not able to bring himself to ask if the ghost was his father.

The ghost let out a laugh "No. I am not even from your world."

Harry let out a breath of relief before he realized what else the ghost said "_My_ world? There's more than one?"

"Oh indeed. Look around you. Every globe you see is a world"

"How many globes are there?" Harry asked after a second of disbelief.

The ghost looked thoughtful for a second before responding "I have honestly no idea. I never bothered counting. The theory would say that there is an infinity of them but... I have no idea if that is true or not"

"An infinity of worlds?" Harry said in a state of total shock by this point "But... But... How? And what theory?"

"If you would stop interrupting me and let me explain you might find out" The ghost said with a tone of reproach

Harry flushed slightly and resolved not to ask any more questions until the ghost was done telling his story

"Not too many years ago in a world much like yours, the main difference being that there was no magic in that world, people came up with a theory that they called the Many Worlds Theory. It said that for every choice that could have gone multiple ways, for every possibility there was another world where that had happened." The ghost saw that Harry was getting more confused by the minute and so tried to give an example that he would understand "Remember how Dumbledore offered you a choice not too long ago. A choice to stay alive or to 'go on'?"

"Yeah..." Harry said slowly.

"There is a world where you chose to go on. There is a world where Lord Voldemort chose to go on. There is a world where you both chose to go on. Anyway, back to the story. They theorized that there were a number of main worlds and all the rest were offshoots, Worlds that broke away from the main one. The world you came from is a offshoot. In the main world that you came from Voldemort died at that last battle."

"Will you stop jumping from one bit to another and tell the story in order?" Harry said in a annoyed tone

"You try to explain it then. Its harder than you think."

"I never said it wasn't. All I said was that you were doing a terrible job of it."

"Oh fine. Where were we again? Oh yes. No one improved much on the theory for a long time as it was thought impossible by most. Then about 25 years ago, in your time, someone had a breakthrough. They realized that there must be one true main world that all the other ones came from. One world that all the breakaways came from in the beginning. In their arrogance they assumed they were the world. That they were the true main world. The world that was the true center of everything. They decided that if they were the true main world than surely there must be a way to see other worlds. Now this wasn't common knowledge. The scientists-"

"The what?"

"Scientists. Researchers. People who discovered things." The ghost said, getting quite annoyed by this point "Now will you keep quiet and let me finish the story? Thank you. As I was saying the scientists knew their idea wouldn't be accepted by the rest of the world as truth so they kept it quiet until they were sure they had the proof they needed to show the world. So they set out getting the proof they needed and the fastest way they could think of to do that was through making a way to get to another world. Unfortunately they had no idea of the forces they were playing with so blithely. Not god you understand. There is still no proof in that or any other world that god or gods exist. But anyway. Not one of them understood that forces that were capable of making a infinite amount of parallel universes were not forces that could be mastered or even safely used by people. I am sorry I am taking so long to explain. It is a very long story."

"No no. That's alright."

"Good good. Anyway. The scientists had a conference one year to decide how to go about making a device that would transport you to another universe, or at least open a path through which messages could be sent. Everyone had a different idea of how that would work and most everyone had made something already that they said proved their idea. They went by every one of them, testing them one by one and one by one each one of them failed to do anything. Until they came to the last device. It wasn't made by a scientist at all. It was just a kid in his mid teens who had come with his uncle to watch the debate the first day and had gone home that night and made up designs for a device to do something that none of them had even thought of. A device to transport you not to another world but to a place that looked upon all of the worlds. A control room, from which you could not only look at what is happening but interfere. To make your own worlds. To be like a god. Now the scientists who were in charge of this project knew that such a thing would never be allowed by the general public so they publicly denounced the plans but studied them hard in secret and found that there was no theoretical reason why they shouldn't work. So for the next years conference they built one and planned to debut it live."

"When everyone was at the conference they announced that they had built a machine that may have solved the problem and they were going to debut it on the main stage. When they brought the machine out it didn't look like a sleek, futuristic machine like everyone had assumed but like a hulking mass of iron and wires. Inside you could only just see a cage and control panel. However... When it was tried for the first time something went wrong. I don't know if they built it wrong or if it ever would have work properly in the first place but it is really neither here nor there." The ghost again looked thoughtful and then said "I suppose in a way they achieved their ambition of being the main world for in no other world did anyone think of making such a machine and they spawned no other worlds after they started to try. I think the universe has a built in safety switch that will try to stop things like that as much as it can."

"Please. Just the story. No long philosophic thoughts. This is hard enough for me to understand as it is" Harry pleaded

The ghost chuckled "Alright. No more philosophy. The story is almost done anyway. As I was saying the machine went wrong. It certainly opened a gateway to such a place but the gateway was not controlled in the machine. The gateway expanded far faster than they had planned for. They tried desperately to shut it down once they realized that something had gone wrong but it was too late. It not only opened a gateway to here, for this is the place that overlooks all the worlds, but it also opened a gateway to so many other worlds."

"But I thought that most of the worlds weren't much too different than mine or theirs?" Harry asked

"Most of them are" The ghost admitted. "However even if it created a portal to your world can you imagine the chaos? Imagine if it loosed dragons? But that really is the main word there. Most. There are worlds where there are still dinosaurs. There are worlds where things that you couldn't even imagine exist. Now imagine opening a portal to a hundred thousand such worlds."

"Oh" Harry said, not able to think of any other words for such a event.

"The scientists realized that if they were to stay there they would all die so many of them tried to get to the machine. Most of them died along the way but two of them made it to the machine and activated it, expecting to go to wherever the person who had activated it first did, for she had disappeared when the machine was activated. Instead they got transported here. When they got here they were puzzled for a time but then realized that they must be in the true main world, the Middle Universe as they began to call it"

"Middle Universe? Do they have Lord of the Rings in that universe as well?"

The ghost laughed, obviously delighted that Harry had caught the reference "They do indeed. Anyway. Once they realized they were in the Middle Universe they decided to do what they had intended to do when they first built the machine. To play 'god' so to speak, To try to change the course of worlds. Sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse but always different. They did this for a long while but eventually they began to fade. Together they came to the conclusion that they must be doing this place's equivalent of dying. Neither of them were too bothered by this as they had been here for a long time and had seen things that no one ever had before. They assumed they would either go to some afterlife or just go into nothing, for it seems that what happened depends on what world you were in. But they did neither."

"Wait... Are you one of the the first people to come here? If not you seem to know a lot about what they were thinking."

"I am. I was one of the first two. I was one of the scientists who were blinded by their arrogance." The ghost sighed deeply, It seemed he had never fully forgiven himself for this. "And I have been here ever since. Not dead or alive. Just... existing. Every little while a new pair come through and it is up to me and my partner to tell them what this place is."

"Partner? Pair? Is someone else from my world here as well? Do I know them?"

As the ghost had been talking his form had been slowly filling out and could now be seen as a middle aged, rather bookish looking man. He had silver-gray hair and a black t-shirt and pants, He had no mustache but a short black beard. He was a bit taller than Harry and very slender.

"There is someone else from your world here and you know them very well. By the way you can call me Daniel."

"You aren't going to tell me who else came here with me are you?" Harry said with a wry grin

"Right in one. Anyway, I don't need to tell you. You can just come and see them." Daniel said and began walking off.

Harry followed him (It seemed you could walk perfectly fine in mid air and yet when you wanted to go up or down you just kind of... did. Harry tried not to think about it too much) After a while they came to just below a platform of what looked like white marble.

"What? They get a nice platform and we have to talk in mid air?" Harry jokingly complained

"Your friend seems to have figured out how to work the latent magic in this place already." Daniel said before beginning to float straight up to the platform "Anyway. Here we are"

Harry followed him up and was about to ask another question when he saw who was on the platform.

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Not really a cliffhanger but... meh. If you are wondering who else is there just look at who the characters are in the description. I will try to get this updated as often as possible if people like it (hint hint) but I am still quite slow at writing. I eventually want to get out one chapter per week but it will probably be every 2-4 weeks at first. This is assuming people like it. If they don't than I will probably try something different. If you have any questions about this please either leave a comment or send me a message on . About the chapter... I hope it didn't get too boring when Daniel was telling his story. I tried to have a bit of dialog in there but I am not sure how well it worked. If there is anything I didn't explain in this chapter there is a decent chance it will be in next chapter. There is a fair bit of stuff that I deliberately left out. Thanks for reading everyone :)


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